


Let Them Lie Together

by Volant



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Character Death, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, Iliad AU, Implied Relationships, Past Relationship(s), Talking To Dead People, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, War, and do very violent things because of that anger, basically certain characters are very sad and very angry, poor kiddos
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-04
Updated: 2015-10-04
Packaged: 2018-04-24 19:46:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4932904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Volant/pseuds/Volant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Outside the gates of Troy, Jaime waits for Brienne to return from battle. When she does, everything changes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let Them Lie Together

**Author's Note:**

> If you're looking for a happy ending, this isn't it. Seriously.

_“But I have you with me now..._

_Fresh as the morning dew you lie in the royal halls_

_Like one whom Apollo, lord of the silver bow,_

_Has approached and shot to death with gentle shafts."_

_(The Iliad, Book 24, lines 886-892_

 

Brienne dies wearing Jaime’s armor.

            “They thought it was me,” he says when Addam tells him. “Of course they thought it was me.”

            Jaime waits for them to bring her body up from the battlefield. He watches them come trudging up the hill, struggling to balance the wench’s limp body on their shields. They would have placed her with the rest of the dead, to the East of the camp, but Jaime stops the soldiers as they pass.

            “Not her,” he says. “Put her in my tent.”

            And they do. The men who laughed at Brienne in life are the same as those who visit, who pay their condolences. They stand just outside of Jaime’s tent, wringing their hands and patting their breastplates and looking as contrite as they would before the gods themselves.

            “You should see them now,” Jaime tells Brienne once. He sits beside where she has been laid out on his palette, cleaned and dressed in a soft white gown. Even the scar on her cheek has faded to a ghostly pink. “You would laugh if you could hear them praying for your soul. Your godsdamned perfect soul.”

            Jaime knows that the vigil is most important for the souls of the dead. He tries to kneel beside Brienne’s cold body and pray to the Maiden, the Crone, the Stranger…but it feels wrong, to be with her and _not_ speak. It’s a habit, developed during their early months together in order to counteract her insufferably serious attitude. He misses her muttering for him to “be quiet!” during war meetings.

            He half hopes that his words will irk her so much that they will draw her back from behind whatever veil she’s passed through.

            But nothing happens, and the first night finds Jaime clinging to her cold, strong, stiff hand while he sobs into the bedclothes and begs her to open her stupid, blue, cow eyes and “look at me, please _look at me_.”

            In the morning, Addam visits. He brings food—bread, and cheese, and a good deal of wine—and finds Jaime sitting, straight and silent, on his stool beside his lady.

            “You need to sleep,” Addam says.

            “I failed her,” Jaime looks at him. “Leave.”

            Addam does, but he leaves the food behind. Jaime’s stomach aches, but he doesn’t touch the platter.

            “You know,” he tells Brienne on the second night, “in this light, you could almost be alive.”

            On the third day, a Septon comes to read Brienne her final prayers. It’s an old man. His age is the only thing that keeps Jaime from throwing the priest to the floor when, at the end of his seven prayers, the Septon looks Jaime in the eyes and tells him that peace will come with time.  They are almost the same words that Brienne gave Jaime when word came to him of Cersei’s death—the same words that she said as she took Jaime in her strong arms and told him about her big brother, Galadon, and the waves that took him in his youth.

            On the fourth day, Jaime sits beside Brienne and polishes her sword. Oathkeeper gleams, wicked and red as blood in the sunlight that winks in between the flaps of the tent’s entrance. He wipes away the crust of blood and dirt at its hilt, and sits there, with it across his knees, running his thumb so close along the blade that he can just almost feel the sharpness of it. The moon rises and sets. The blue-black of the night fades into the gray twilight of morning. Somewhere, a bird sings as Jaime straps his dented breastplate on, crooked, over his torso.

            He almost stops when he puts on his helmet (metal rent apart by some godsforsaken weapon) because he swears he can feel her. He can smell that familiar, sharp scent that reminds him of their long months together on the road to King’s Landing. That reminds him of Harrenhal, of the Bloody Mummers, of the first time that they said goodbye and the last time their lips touched and her blue eyes shining with excitement while she promised—“I’ll be back before dawn”—and left.

            “I’m going to find him,” Jaime tells her as he straps Oathkeeper around his waist. “I’ll kill him, and then I’ll let you go.”

            Addam is waiting outside with Jaime’s horse. He watches, silent, as Jaime mounts her, and rides towards the gates of Troy.      

           

           

           


End file.
